


bistability

by jatazak (JazzTap)



Category: Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Psychological Drama, The Dark Side of the Force, Walkthrough Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-30
Updated: 2016-09-30
Packaged: 2018-08-18 08:00:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8154980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzTap/pseuds/jatazak
Summary: If I am changed, it is willingly, because there is no other choice.





	

**Author's Note:**

> You will succeed where the Jedi failed. You will listen, when others would not.
> 
> Or, wisdom from a broken woman.
> 
> [Forsaken](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V6UvhVXruE) (Dream Theater)  
> [L’Occhio Occidentale](http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/41037048/images/1436158182981.jpg) (Nicola Samori)

TELOS.

The Republic does a good job of losing your ship and endangering your life. It's an embarrassment. You were a patriot, once.

A revanchist who drove back the Mandalorians. A general who issued the fatal command. A traitor who sought the famed Jedi mercy, and was found wanting.

One forced to wander, barely seeing or hearing, insensate to anything beyond your skull but the idle chatter of masses who sacrificed _nothing_ -

There laid your mantle, untaken.

  


Atris, proper Jedi, locks herself in ice. Like calls to like. She’s done less to help Telos than you have since getting arrested. She refuses your aid, your call to arms, even now.

She flaunts a weapon, your shed Jedi life. Cyan burns your vision, its afterimage red. You have no right to it, but she has less.

You were invincible, once. The delusion passed. It is still not a prop to be waved about, not so far beyond your reach.

  


NAR SHADDAA.

Kreia guides you patiently. Her lip curls. Her visage sags. She was once Sith, as you were once Jedi.

Her words are of advice, no more and no less. It is your wrist that wields the blade. Your pressure that goads the fallen veterans to haste, the terrorist to mercy. The Serroco annihilate themselves, freeing the refugees. A sick man spares others his suffering.

All lives are bound by the Force. Tightly, and inescapably.

  


On the Exchange yacht above Nar Shaddaa, you are scolded via droid proxy. Ostensibly it is an interrogation.

As if there is no difference between ‘Jedi sects’, not to the stability of the galaxy. As if you should pick one or the other, and be quick about it.

It is a wreck within the week. The droid and one of the bounty hunters now travel with you.

  


ONDERON.

Your pilot thinks you ill. Asks you to stop listening to Kreia. It is only their petty rivalry again. Can he see the tension in your limbs? The predatorial shift of stance? There is no such thing.

You feel no pain when muscles tear, when bones break. These will have time enough to heal, later. You feel no satisfaction when you smile, and the merchant shrinks back. But there are masks for this.

  


You enjoy the rain on Dxun. It clears your head. Your Mandalorian allies stand where your Republic soldiers died. A few more dead to whisper, now - in the palace, in the temple. The faceless troopers failed to dodge. The hollow assassins failed to parry. The general's soldiers tried to flee.

The huntress lead one mission. An unqualified success, measured in loot, measured in bodies. She looked in the mirrored lenses of a Sith cultist’s mask, and saw there something terrifying.

She's right. You see strength.

  


DANTOOINE.

You find the Jedi Masters, except one. Kreia's former student found Vash first.

In the end, you’re forced to take Vrook’s useless plan to save the Republic and make something of it. This is nothing new, but he’s more of an ass about it.

(The Masters would destroy you, if not for Kreia. You ~~don't~~ remember the stillness. The dread of impending collapse. The shadow swallowing everything. Again.)

You’re forced to pluck Juyo from his corpse before it’s yet fallen. What a waste, to save it for you, and _not the enemy_.

  


Kai-El accuses you inside the council chamber. Kavar offers only the hum of his blades. Their skill permits no hesitation.

“It was swift,” you tell Kreia, for compunction.

She clarifies. You wrought the bonds. They carried the shattering resonance which erased you from the Force. The Council did not create the abomination.

Now the Sith have emulated it. For all that she sought to teach, you have left her nothing. You are left to die.

  


You gasp for air. Dry grass brushes your cheek. There is no hint of the cauterized wound in your gut, reflected across the bond with your Master, who put the lightsaber through herself in an instant. Not to kill, but to edify.

What hatred you bore the Council was nothing, really. You gave _so much_ of yourself. The weakness of your heart. The color of your eyes.

Your disciple does not judge. He finds a way to understand.

(He would have seen his idols thrown down, their hollow shells upon the grass. He must not trust you blindly.)

In place of your sacrifice, he sees a savior. It is enough.

  


RAVAGER.

Atris, former Jedi, discusses her abstention from the war with you. Your old saberstaff rests heavy in her hand. She clutches her side.

“Sometimes, one’s choices seem narrower than they are. Until there is no solid foundation on which to stand. I feel that I understand.”

Her sentence is exile, on Telos, self-enforced. She surrenders the instrument before you can take it. Its weight is one of comforting inevitability. It grows colder in your gloved hand.

  


Nihilus has been mislead. There is nothing for him here but a lieutenant’s station and an archivist’s monastery. A mislaid apprentice and two of Revan’s broken generals.

There are no billions of lives. There are no hundreds of Jedi. If he hadn’t died to you, he’d have died of starvation.

This is nothing more than an execution. You know the script.

(Kreia would destroy the galaxy, starting with Telos, if not for you. True destruction lies in failure to heal. You don't remember, and don't need to, if you would look.)

  


MALACHOR V.

Sion cannot be defeated in battle. He cannot let go of power, for it quite literally binds him together.

So he has no strength at all, he who would destroy the Jedi, and hasn't. Who stands now, usurped, outside the shadows of his own academy. Who would not see you broken by her.

His battles are lost, always, before they are fought.

  


Is Traya proud? Her students have enacted her revenge. The Jedi are consumed, not dead, and their Force is known for the poison it is - that sharpens the senses, and addles the will.

Is Kreia proud? Her student has enacted her revenge. The Trayus Sith lie slaughtered, their pawns discarded - freed, - and in death, bound to you. Their lords are all but vanquished.

  


Kreia tests you again. You have left indecision behind. Her approval has never been clearer, even when she sat before you in meditation, not shadow-crowned nor onyx-eyed.

Even when you had sat with her.

Now you smile (your lips pull back, the corners lift), and bow your head. Darth Traya gasps faintly, the Jedi blade emerging through her back. You catch her body as it falls, and carry it to the edge.

The core swallows her corpse greedily. The chamber floor casts an inverse light. The flash of lurid neon creates stark relief.

  


...

You turn to your apprentices. In their desperation, for they seek power. In their desolation, for they seek you. Like seeks like.

Revan would war against the True Sith. Your Lost Jedi will fight. If there are further cruelties, further tragedies, it is only until they are unnecessary. If they are changed, it is willingly, because there is no other choice.

(There are only wars of control and of conversion, and only one is lasting.)

You will possess Malachor until your duty ends. You feel no torment, although it screams. You recognize so many of their voices. You could never have saved them, as you were.

Only until the Force does not breathe, and fan the flames in which the galaxy burns. Revan may disagree. Revan should _expect_ betrayal in kind.

Until ~~the last~~ war ends, and Malachor is silent, and its students gone to wander.

**Author's Note:**

> Earlier version posted to Tumblr. Last major revision 10/27/16. Last content edit 12/5/16.
> 
> reference material, cont'd:  
> [vacancy signs](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5284482/1/Vacancy-Signs) (verdant_fire)  
> [ten steps to a fall](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6176270) (bam_cassiopeia)
> 
> Traitor (matthew stover)  
> Invisible Cities (italo calvino)


End file.
